My friend i need your help.

My goal is to have a PC boot windows operating system (XP or Vista or 7) from an external drive (usb drive, compactflash).
Although we can moodify the windows installation procces to install windows FROM a usb device, from what i have reagured out lately, Windows does not support booting the operating system (not the windows setup program) from an external usb device.

I need to set a PC to boot from an external HDD and in case i unplag the external HDD to boot from the internal one.
I prefer not to modify the boot.ini of the internal installation.

I will appreciate if you propose any solutions.

By the way, is there any adaptor to convert the sata connector (located ON the pc motherboard) into a USB?

Regards

Instead of complicated USB installation, try it with SATA/eSATA connector to an external eSATA HDD
(there are even cheap Raid1 cases out, which work with only one cable).

Then define the boot order 1.HDD (external), 2.HDD internal

Whenever the external HDD is connected it should boot from it,
otherwise it should boot from internal drive.

These cases usually do have a USB port too ...

+++

people really do ask the lamest questions. why did i even click on this? I think i find humor in stupidity.

Smart guy !!!